It’s no secret that the best way to win a football
game is to control the line of scrimmage.
Whether it is Oregon, Alabama, or Stanford, spread, pro, or power any
offense’s success hinges on the skill of its offensive linemen. Some out there have claimed that this topic
has been beaten to death and others have watched a few spring practices and
claim miraculous development without anything other than a wink and a “trust
me”. These same people are the ones who
think that 4-5, 5-4, 5-4, 5-4 is incremental progress and that the special
season is always next year (it’s only a year away!).

There is no reason to trust those that say “let it
play out” or blindly close their eyes to the reality around them. Husky fans deserve critical thoughtful
discussion of every issue surrounding UW football. Let’s take an in-depth look
into UW OL recruiting (04-13) versus the rest of the Pac12 OL recruiting
(09-13).

Offensive
line recruiting comes down to two things; the number of players and the quality
of the players. Measuring the quality of the player is obviously subject to
opinion so I will not be using my own methodology, but Scout.com’s rankings
system. Scout.com has developed an adjusted player score (APS) that allows one
to score a players quality based on that player’s position rank, total number
of players ranked at that position, and star ranking. This ranking system
creates two scores, position points and star points. The star points are simple
and detailed below.

The position points awarded are more complicated,
these are based on that player’s position ranking and the total number of
players ranked that year by scout. The best way to understand is by example, let’s
use new UW Center commit Dan Crane and WSU Center commit Carlos Freeman.

The position points are then added to the star
points to give use the total recruit score.

This process was repeated for every single offensive
lineman (OT, OG, C) that committed and signed to a Pac12 school from 2009
recruiting class to present (2013). These scores were then put together into
class scores which were then added to total OL recruiting scores, shown in a
graph below representing 2009-2013.

As shown the UW offensive line recruiting from 2009
to 2013 places UW 8th in the Pac12 in total OL recruiting and
significantly behind the top 1/3 schools of UCLA, Oregon, Stanford, and USC.

Now that you have all the information to compare UW
OL recruiting to its peers around the Pac12 let’s play everyone’s favorite game
and compare UW under Sark (2009-2013) to the worst coach in UW history (Tyrone
Willingham 2004-2008). Some may claim that UW sitting at 8th out of
12 in OL recruiting after 5 years isn’t all that bad or that UW (and likewise
Sark) is on the right road to recovery.
Let’s take a look at UW OL recruiting from 2004 to present.

It is obvious from all the data shown that there is
no improvement or urgency when it comes to Offensive line recruiting at UW.
Sark is recruiting at the same level as the worst coach in history, a coach who
“hated recruiting” and alienated local recruits. Likewise those that claim
there is a new urgency for the current staff when it comes to OL recruiting have
ignored the previous 5 years and having nothing to offer but “let it play out”
lines. It is apparent that any way you cut this, UW is and has recruited
extremely poorly at the most important position in
football. In order for UW to rise out of mediocrity into national relevance UW
must improve its OL recruiting. Unfortunately Sark has made it clear that he
does not value OL recruiting or is incapable of recruiting to the top half of
the Pac12.